Email verification (Flag)

[Neilk1021]

Adobe.Express.-.Screen.Recording.2026-08-21.at.11.45.30.AM.mp4

Problem

Currently anyone can claim any email when registering, there is nothing stopping me from taking chenli@uci.edu, I have to give 0 evidence I own that account. This is made worse by the fact that email is identity for much of Texera. Besides the obvious security issues and annoyances this presents, theres also the issue of the user mistakingly mistyping their email and not being aware of it.

Proposed solution.

When someone registers, the backend derives a one-time code, emails it to the address they typed, and creates nothing. The sign-up form then asks for that code and re-submits it along with the same fields. The backend re-derives the code and compares: if they match, the address is proven and the account is created (as INACTIVE, pending admin approval, exactly as before).

The code is derived, not stored. There is no pending-registration table, no cleanup job, and nothing about an unfinished signup is written down anywhere.

How it works

1. POST /auth/register validates the fields, pre-checks that the handle and address are free, mails a code, and returns { accessToken: null, verificationRequired: true }. Nothing is written.
2. The form re-submits the same fields plus the code to POST /auth/register/verify.
3. The code is a truncated HMAC-SHA256 over purpose | scope | address | time-step, keyed by a value derived from the JWT secret (RFC 4226-style dynamic truncation, as TOTP does). Checking means re-deriving it for the current and previous step and comparing in constant time.
4. On a match, the account is created inside the transaction that runs the authoritative uniqueness checks; the pre-checks in step 1 are a courtesy, not the guard.

The password travels again in step 2 rather than being held server-side. That is what makes the flow stateless, and it means no password or hash is ever stored, mailed, or parked in the browser while a signup is pending.

Where the flag is off, register behaves exactly as it does today: one call, account created, token issued.

Questions / Considerations

1. Is the stateless verification a good fit? I proposed it because after the immediate period in which they're used they effectively become junk data. This solution has no table, no cleanup, and survives across restarts, however, we can't implement single use invalidation or a proper audit trail. Is that tradeoff acceptable?

2. Should this feature flag be enabled or disabled by default?
   This feature doesn't work without setting up USER_SYS_GOOGLE_SMTP_, which will vary from deployment to deployment. Therefore if this is enabled by default theres a high probability people improperly set up the deployment and don't provide this field breaking verification.

[chenlica]

This stateless verification sounds good to me. I feel it should be enabled by default (after the feature is complete, of course).

Currently we use Google auth. Overtime, it should be one of the auth services.

@aglinxinyuan Your thoughts?

[aglinxinyuan]

1. I agree with stateless design.
2. I think this feature should be enabled by default regardless of having a valid email sending service or not. If there is no smtp, the admin should fix it.

[Neilk1021]

Ok, will make this enabled by default!